Joseph Woods was a politician in the

Province of Canada The Province of Canada (or the United Province of Canada or the United Canadas) was a British North America, British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham ...

, which had been formed by the merger of

Upper Canada The Province of Upper Canada (french: link=no, province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the ...

and

Lower Canada The Province of Lower Canada (french: province du Bas-Canada) was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec an ...

in early 1841. Woods served two terms in the Legislative Assembly of the new province. He was elected in 1841 to the first Parliament of the

, representing the riding of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

Canada West The Province of Canada (or the United Province of Canada or the United Canadas) was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, in the Report on the ...

(now

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

). He was defeated in the general election of 1844, but re-elected in a subsequent by-election in 1845 when the Kent seat became vacant. Woods was a Compact Tory, a conservative who supported the

Family Compact The Family Compact was a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada (today’s Ontario) from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in L ...

, the oligarchic group which had controlled the government of Upper Canada prior to the merger with Lower Canada. In the general election of 1841 for the first Parliament, he won the election for the Kent riding, defeating

Reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill#The Yorkshire Associati ...

candidate

Samuel Bealey Harrison Samuel Bealey Harrison (March 4, 1802 – July 23, 1867) was Joint Premier of the Province of Canada for Canada East from 1841 to 1842 with William Henry Draper PM for Canada West. Draper was a member of the Family Compact and Harrison was ...

. The election was hotly contested, and the

returning officer In various parliamentary systems, a returning officer is responsible for overseeing elections in one or more constituencies. Australia In Australia a returning officer is an employee of the Australian Electoral Commission or a state electoral c ...

refused to make a return of the writ. Woods successfully petitioned the Legislative Assembly to be declared the winner of the election. Following the election, there was a large public dinner held in his honour in the town of

Chatham Chatham may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Canada * Chatham Islands (British Columbia) * Chatham Sound, British Columbia * Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi * Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...

on July 16, 1841. Amongst those who attended were Harrison and Colonel Prince, who had been elected in the neighbouring riding of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. After the dinner, there were toasts to

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

and to the

Governor General of the Province of Canada The Governor General of the Province of Canada was the viceregal post of the pre-Confederation Province of Canada that existed from 1840 to Canadian Confederation in 1867. The post replaced the Governor General of New France and later Governor Gen ...

, and British patriotic songs were sung. Analysing the overall election results, the Governor General, Lord Sydenham, stated that he believed that there were about six Compact Tories who would oppose his administration. Woods was likely amongst those six. In the first session of the Parliament, Woods voted in support of the union, but also voted with the other Compact Tories in opposition to Sydenham's attempts to form a broad-based government across factional lines. In subsequent sessions, he voted consistently with the other Compact Tories, against proposals that tended to increase the authority of the Assembly over that of the Governor General.Cornell, ''Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841-67'', pp. 93–97.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woods, Joseph Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada from Canada West People from Chatham-Kent